writers write

Many have made this observation, including my daughter the writer.

I am a writer too.

I write all the time.

Sometimes it's just lists. For instance, today's list:
make a list
design Distinguished Alumni presentation
design Richard Donahue Award presentation
design Joseph Haynie Award presentation
complete Production Awards
gather computer, light projector, speaker, etc.
get gorgeous
attend White Frosting
clean up
get home
plan trip to Chicago

That's not ALL that I have to do today, but those are the highlights that I mustn't forget.

And there is value in such lists. Much like a journal, it records what is happening in one's life. Looking back at ancient lists, it reminds me what my priorities were at that time. Sometimes, it gives me a sense of accomplishment when I see how much of that list is now done! Sometimes, it reminds me how priorities change when I see that there is little if anything on the list that I now care about or even remember.

However, there is other writing that needs my focused attention soon. Writing plays, articles and books needs a high priority place on the lists I make in future.

Because writers write.

Fear and Guilt as a marketing strategy

Pop-up ads and border ads are how the Internet is funded, no doubt about it.

The ad that caught my eye this morning had a huddled figure in a gray landscape with the caption:

If you died today, who would take care of your family?

Which got me thinking -- not in the way the marketers intended.

If I died today, my family would be fine. Seriously. I have insurance that would cover the burial expenses and take care of some counseling, if needed. All my children are grown and have busy lives of their own. The small income I have is not in any way relied on for managing our household.

So, the fear and guilt the ad is meant to inspire so that I would run out and buy more or better life insurance fails miserably in my case.

However, the ad *did* make me feel something-- uncomfortable, sad.

If I died tomorrow, it seems, it would make no difference at all.

Yesterday, Oprah announced that she will be ending her TV show in about a year and a half, and it was MAJOR NEWS.

My life? not so much.

unseen Powers and how we depend on Them

It is all around us. Invisible, yet powerful. It permeates our lives, although we think of it seldom.

It times of deepest darkness, we cry out for it.

Electricity.

Ah, yes.

So, on Monday, my dh (dear husband) and I were watching TV (television) when we heard a chirping. We heard it a few times.

WHAT was that noise?

It was the smoke detector. But why?

DH turned on the hall light to check. The hall light came on, but dimly. Then it got brighter again.

Hmm....

DH went and checked the circuit breaker box and toggled some switches. Still the occasional fades of power on certain switches.

Odd.

So we went to bed. I read for a while before turning off my bed-lamp-- which would occasionally dim to night-light levels, then after a bit return to read-lamp levels.

Odd.

So, we were already determined we might have to bring in more electronically-minded folk than we-- and then we got up to:

NO WATER.

Our water pump was NOT working. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Feh!

We splashed water on our faces from our filtered-water cache, and rinsed our tooth-brushes with mouthwash. We went to spend the day at work and then we went to a hotel!! with an appointment the next day with an electrician. This was Tuesday night, planning to meet with the electrician on Wednesday.

The electrician arrived on Wednesday. After the embarrassing ordeal of walking through our cluttered basement to the circuit breaker box, the electrician came up with the good news-bad news results.

The good news: the house did not burn down, although it could have from the shorts in the box.

The bad news: due to water coming in to the circuit breaker box, we needed to replace the entire box.

The more bad news: this could not be done till the following day.

The more more bad news (from me): I must throw out the contents of our refrigerator.

I waited for DH to come home from the board meeting he had to attend that night. I thought he would be home about 7:00 or 7:30 pm and we would go out to dine and then perhaps book another hotel (no water means no shower and perhaps even more critical NO FLUSHING OF TOILETS!).

DH's board meeting ran until past 9:00 pm. He was wiped out. So, I fixed him a drink, then we went out to eat (and washed up at the restaurant in the bathroom!) and came home to sleep.

The next day, Thursday, the electrician returned and all is now repaired.

I don't know how much this all ended up costing; however, hot showers and flushing toilets: priceless!

What I did today... and yesterday...

Yesterday I emptied my refrigerator. Because I live in Michigan, I could put all my refrigerator items in the garage because we only had a high today of 40 degrees.

I unplugged the refrigerator and propped the doors open.

I threw away *sigh* a bunch of food, as the fridge had not been fridging very well.

That was yesterday. Today I finished cleaning the thawed and melted refrigerator. I cleaned the floor underneath it (OMG WAS THAT GROSS). I plugged the fridge back in and put a refrigerator thermometer in it.

It has been about 12 hours. The temperature has now gotten down to.. 50.

There may be a refrigerator shopping spree in the future. The near future.

dream houses

Another house dream.

This one in some senses was almost like a flea market, big open rooms that didn't really belong to me but where I had a right (more or less) to keep my things.

Sort of like the unfinished room in a business that lets us keep our theater troupe's stuff there.

Any way, I had stuff on a table -- Dickens style jackets, and other junkie stuff. Someone-- two women, gossipy-- came by and put their stuff on my table. Some of their stuff was a boom-box sized and looking device that was playing some movie that they were watching. I said, this is the table where I have my stuff, they said, well we are putting our stuff here too.

They started moving the table-- now it had wheels-- toward their space, some other place. I said, well how will I know where my stuff is?

And they shrugged, kept wheeling and watching their movie.

So I followed and scooped up all my stuff and put it on a wooden chair that had a high, two-post back. I looked for someplace to store it.

There was an already over-flowing storage space that seemed to be in a basement. I put my chair full of stuff in a corner as I went exploring for more space.

There was a wall with audition-type notices-- you put up your headshot and people would come by and pick you. But most of the head shots looked like comic strip characters. I thought about it but realized my schedule was still not flexible enough.

Somewhere in the dream were Lavinia and my mother. Don't recall now where they fit in.

And at some point in my dream I poked my head into the attic, and I saw that there was a large gap in the window frame held open with insulation. The window in the attic was big like my dining room window.

I came back down and told others we should take out the insulation that was prying open the window frame and caulk up the gap. I said I just knew it would make a big difference in energy costs.

They just shrugged and weren't interested.

Then it started storming. I called it hail, but it looked like gobs of fluffy snow thrown at the windows.

Not the attic windows, though. I had come back down.

Note: in real life, I don't think I have ever poked my head into our attic even to look.

the failure of excellence

I was raised with the expectation that excellence would be rewarded.

"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."

I understood this to mean that if you do something well, if you excel, you will succeed. Many anecdotes, comments, proverbs all reinforced this idea.

So, I have been laid off my teaching job.

I am an excellent teacher. I know this from student comments, student evaluation scores, and from seeing my students go on and continue to succeed.

So why wasn't this enough?

You can say it's the economy (it is), you can say it is the ridiculous tenure system (it is), but I still feel betrayed.

the house of my dreams

I dreamed a house dream last night.

Over the years, I have dreamed a lot of house dreams. When I was younger, I dreamed of tornadoes. However, in the past 20 years or so I have dreamed a lot of house dreams.

It is mostly the interior of the house. This time, it seemed it was the house I had lived in when we lived in Brighton. But it was different of course. It was even bigger. There were verandahs, on the second floor as well as the first. Hardwood floors on the verandahs, and rails all around. There was something about moving-- moving away, and then by the end we were moving back in. It was happy to move back in, but lots of cleaning to do, and re-establishing chairs around the table, putting furniture where it should go.

Waiting for people to leave... the people who had lived there before? Then I turned to my daughter with satisfaction, we can settle in now.

There were display cases-- with almost diorama displays. Outside on the upstairs verandah there was a display case that had large "normal size" chairs in different shapes, and then in front china/porcelain figures set up as if dancing at a ball. I knew that it was an old setting and I would need to put in my own.

The change in the duplex was that the house was now an open design, and there was a washing machine in the kitchen.

Dream analysis says that to dream of a house is the dream of the Self.

Of course, dream analysis pretty much says EVERY dream is of the Self.

According to one source, a balcony (say, the upper veranda) refers to the desire to be noticed, to gain prestige and recognition. A porch meaning your social self.

Seeing the floor refers to support. Fences (railings?) represent obstacles.

Moving and updating... the obvious, right?

My dreams have always been fairly transparent.

a great year for bugs

In addition to swine flu and assorted germie-type bugs, it has been a spectacular year for insects.

It has been cool and wet almost all summer here in Michigan. Apparently, this is great not only for mosquitoes and gnats, but also for ants and wasps and hornets.


All except the paper wasps. They don't like the wet.

As I am busy cleaning the basement, there are flies that have appeared buzzing, big-bellied and BIG over night. The mosquitoes are horrid and have contributed to cutting walks shorter. There are enormous ant hills all over our property-- we only mow around the house, and now we are almost surrounded by ants.

AND... also almost overnight, we spotted a hornet's nest that is about TWICE THE SIZE OF YOUR HEAD on the east side of our house under the eaves at the peak.

I don't care how swelled your head is, it is twice the size. At least!

I spotted it as I was driving away one day and described it to my dh (Dear Husband). He said, maybe we can take care of it... I said, NO! We have to call an exterminator. When I showed it to him, he agreed. It's huge, no lie. One day it wasn't there, and it seems like the next day it was THERE, absolutely huge.


So we called the exterminator. He came out and was doing his thing outside the house. I noticed he was at the front of the house (north side) with his ladder for a bit. When I mentioned it to my dh, he thought it odd too, and he called just to make sure the guy did check the east side. Sure enough, he did check the east side and sprayed the hornet nest and was planning on coming back a few days later -- when the hornets were all dead-- to take down the nest. BUT, he said, I noticed that you had some yellow jackets nesting around one of the corners of the front of your house. I will need to get into the house to take care of that one.

So, we said okay. He came back a couple days later and went and looked in our little pantry in the basement that is right beneath our little foyer. He called my dh down to look at what he had found.

A GIANT YELLOW JACKET NEST! Almost as big as the hornet's nest outside. The guy
said that the species of yellow jackets don't make much bigger nests than that one. He said the hornet nest was the biggest he'd seen this season for that species too. He suited up and sprayed and dusted the nest and he will be back next week to take out both nests.

WHOA.

Once the fumes were gone, I took some pictures.


The white card in the picture with the yellow jacket nest in the pantry is a 3 X 5 index card.

The guy said we were fortunate that the yellow jackets nested in the corner of the pantry. If they had nested in the attic, that size of a nest meant that they would have gotten into and chewed up the dry wall.

strange sightings at the food store.

On a trip through the grocery store in Mississippi, I saw a number of items that were on sale-- that really shouldn't be-- I mean really, at a grocery store?

Patio furniture. Seriously? I can put this in my cart? How do I fit this in my reusable grocery bag?

Then we saw a sofa-bed.

A framed "art" piece of a football player.

I resisted, but have now come to accept, the cookware and Cusinarts, the dishes, dish towels and dishpans. OK, they aren't food, but they are involved in the preparing and serving of food.

I have gotten used to the convenience of toiletries, toilet paper and toilet cleaner being in the store so that I can pick them up while I shop.

But firewood?

End tables (stacking!only $12.99 each with your savings club card!)?

It isn't just Mississippi: these same grocery store gaffs are in Michigan, too.

What I want to underscore here is: this is NOT at the Super-store that tries to be-it-all. This is at the FOOD STORE.

What next? Cars? Computers?

Saturdays

I don't have as many emails, usually, on a Saturday, as so much of the email activity comes from my Jewish women's email list, and many are observing Shabbat, in part by staying away from the computers.

I wonder how working computers qualifies halachically as work? Is maniupulating the electricity making fire?

egotistic quote of the day

I never succumb to peer pressure, because I am without peer.

Mississippi

My daughter lives in Mississippi; I live in Michigan. I have visited her a number of times over the past several years. She has also visited the ol' homestead a number of times...

Probably 90% of my visits to her have been in the summertime. About 90% of her visits to Michigan have been in the cold-weather seasons.

Go figure.

the sh* word

Today I feel that the sh* word is "SHOULD"

As in: I should be doing, I should have said....

For I should be
writing a play that is to be produced in October
writing a syllabus for a class I start teaching in a month
outlining my book(s)
outlining my article(s)
reviewing the text for the class I will be teaching
walking
exercising...

Instead I am sitting and sipping and surfing...

what am I supposed to do?

I am having another of those moments of existential angst.

Or, another series.

I have founded two youth theater groups. Both are still active-- the younger one, for older kids, about to celebrate its tenth anniversary is quite active, the older one, for younger (and older) kids, is about to celebrate its eighteenth anniversary. The older one (for younger kids) has been less active in recent years, while the younger one (for older kids) has been quite active.

None of my own biological children has been in a show in a number of years now.

So why am I still doing it?

I'm not getting paid-- I get an occasional stipend, which would not even cover mileage (if I were to charge mileage).

I believe in the power of young people as artists. I believe in the power of theater to transform lives.

But my faith is being challenged lately.

Since the "poisonous comedy" referenced in 2008, I have had more challenges in the culture of the organizations I have founded. Parents objecting to the material (well, if you don't think your 12 year old should be exposed to Shakespeare, so be it-- take 'em out!).

Young people treating the group as a social club -- to the point that the artistic endeavor suffers.

And young persons and older persons disrespecting me, the material and the process.

This is not what I signed on for.

At the same time, I will find -- in the same production-- that theater, my directing, Shakespeare-- some combination of these-- has changed a young person's life for the better.

All at the same time.

The tentative plan I have now is: meet with the core group of teens. Tell them how much I have been hurt. Tell them how much I believe. Ask them to join me with whole hearts.

Or leave. Leave now. Create your own group!

Or-- I could retire.

2010 could be a watershed year. Either re-invent ourselves. Or make our exits gracefully.

one month

One month later, I am disappointed and determined.

For the first three weeks I was absolutely on track with my plan.

I took my cleansing products.

I drank 8 glasses of water- minimum- per day.

I walked 10,000 steps- minimum- per day- of which total, at least 30 minutes each day was continuous walking.

I ate a modest breakfast, modest lunch, modest dinner. Dinner was finished by 7:00 pm most days.

And by the end of 3 weeks, I had lost 1 pound, and 1 inch from my waist.


In this past week, I have walked about 10,000 steps a day- but most days I have missed the 30 minutes of continuous walking.

I am taking the cleansing products - I missed 2 days when I was out of town.

I am still drinking 8 glasses of water a day.

Aiming for those 3 modest meals, but I have had a later supper or two and I had cake for my birthday, and a late night chocolate snack--

And I still remain at 1 pound lower than my starting weight and one inch off my waist.

I am disappointed, but still determined.

I will aim to get back on the walking track, back to the modest meals.

I so want this to work! Because this is something that I can keep up! But what if it's not enough? I can't yo-yo with my weight anymore!

the weight is over

You know you are overweight when the weight that first drove you to seek out Weight Watchers now looks like a desirable goal weight.

I am so tired of being depressed and repulsed when I see pictures of myself.

I am also nervous about committing to a weight loss plan.

You see, I have gone to Weight Watchers- 3 times. Each time I lost the weight and met my goal weight-- in fact, the last time, I met my goal and stayed on it long enough to become a life-long member!-- and then, each time, I have gained it all back-- plus about 7 more pounds.

It's not just Weight Watchers. I've tried other plans too, with the same result: initial success, then gaining it back plus more.

I can't afford to gain it all back plus more this time.

I know people who have had liposuction, and gained it all back plus more. I know people who have had stomach surgery, who have gained it all back plus more. I know people who have lost a LOT of weight, medically supervised, and then gained it all back plus more.

This terrifies me.

I'm going to work a plan once again. I am trying to design a plan that will work FOR ME. FOREVER.

I am starting with a colon cleansing program that is also training me to drink 8 glasses of water a day.

I am starting a walk-30-minutes-every-day plan. This is difficult for me, as walking just to walk is a challenge. However, it is summertime now, and I am getting out and walking- with my pedometer, sometimes with my dog- every day. And I will acquire, before the inclement weather begins, a treadmill. I will.

I have also signed up for an online weight tracking chart and online waistline tracking chart.

Today I begin.

all a twitter

do people really have time to keep all the different social networking -- working?

I've turned down several, and I still have Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Myspace. I can't keep up with them all. I'm trying to work out a schedule: Monday Myspace, Tuesday Twitter...

It is the way to keep up with people, I guess. It seems, though, that people phase through the different sites.

Once, Myspace was *IT*. Now, more of my connections are more active on Facebook.

But happens to the sites we leave behind? I even have a Livejournal kicking around someplace.

I started a Twitter account, and I don't think I've been back to it since. I have the LinkedIn because it seemed more business and less social...

But what's next?

Will Myspace soon languish with Livejournal in cyber-limbo? Will Facebook fade as a fad?

I am seriously trying to figure out how to consolidate and/or shut down these different sites.

Yet I've heard time and again, once it's out there online it is never truly gone...

However, soooo much is soooo forgotten.... and forgettable.

drama

In a certain family, a woman decided to divorce her husband of more than 20 years.

She decided to do this just a few months before her only daughter's wedding.

Now, she has said to one soon-to-be-ex-in-law, that she can't believe that her soon-to-be-ex-sister-in-law (S2BX-SIL) "isn't returning her calls." That she, the Divorcing Woman (DW) wants to hold the only shower for her daughter, giving it with her friends. That she, the DW, doesn't want any of her (the DW's) family invited to the shower.

This all is getting back to the S2BX-SIL, who is thinking, all I wanted to do was to give my niece a shower.

Kander Look-alike Meter

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity - Collage - Morph

stories: why I became a theater artist

I struggle in my relationship with my father. Ever since my brother was born, it was clear that as the only son, my brother was also the favorite child.

My dad has tried to be supportive from time to time. My dad is NOT a feminist, but he has tried to be enlightened from time to time.

For instance, when I came home with some extraordinarily high score on some standardized test or other, my father urged me to broaden my horizons.

He said, "These are great scores. You could do anything. You don't have to feel limited because you are a girl. You could do anything... you could become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer... as long as it didn't require talent, you could do it."

So I became an actor.

bomb threat

There was another bomb threat at my university today.

This makes the third or fourth in as many months.

One building was closed and will be all day.

bizarre.

what honor in murder?

Man Accused Of Killing Daughter For Family Honor-

That was the headline at npr.org today. I heard on the radio when I was going home from a morning appointment at the optometrist's.

In July, a young woman was found dead. Her father allegedly confessed to strangling her with a bungee cord because she was bringing dishonor to the family by seeking a divorce.

"She wanted out of an arranged marriage, but her father thought a divorce would bring shame to the family. . . Honor killings are old rites of murder within families, committed because of some perceived dishonor or shame."-- from the NPR story.

The story later states "[A police officer] says Rashid told him that killing his daughter was a right given to him by God — and that God would protect him. To police, in other words, this was an honor killing."

The defense team is trying to keep this incident from being labeled an honor killing.

As I listened to the radio, and more and more as I thought about it, I was uncomfortable with the label myself. The semantics of it: an honor killing. It makes it sound-- well, not like murder, not like a homicide, not like murdering your own flesh and blood. Labeling such a crime an honor killing makes it sound almost noble.

There is nothing admirable about murder, certainly nothing honorable about murdering your own flesh and blood.

And let's be honest: how many "honor killings" target men, huh? Much like "wife-beating" or "domestic violence", this kind of semantic dance turns blame away from the perpetrator, distances the criminal from the crime, the offender from the offense.

"Wife-beating" sounds like there are wives out there getting beaten, sure, by... someone. "Domestic violence" makes brutality in the home-- where we should be safest, where we should have the people who love us and protect us-- seem abstract, the topic for scholarly research.

The language we use is important. It shapes our perceptions. It matters.

Why, oh, why, would such a thing be called an honor killing? Even in the perpetrator's mind, it is not motivated by honor, but by shame-- perceived shame, anyway.

If you must call it anything other than murder, call it a shame murder.

young + thin = beautiful

Have you noticed? On TV, in the movies, everyone is young and thin and beautiful.

Just watch.

Oh, occasionally you will see a man who is older, or quirky looking, or even heavier -- most often on comedies (where you may *occasionally* see a woman who is heavier), or as the victim / butt-0f-joke on a dramedy or drama.

A woman who is not thin or not young is virtually never the center of our attention in drama, never the heroine of the tale.

Just watch.

I am not happy about this equation.

It seems once we have grown older and filled out our figures and borne our children, there is really no need for us. We certainly don't need to be visible in the media through which, like it or not, art mirrors life and life mirrors art.

I don't like this equation and I don't know how to change it.

Real women with real bodies have been admired in days gone by...



And even longer gone than Rubens' day:


What ever happened that made "boyish hips" a good thing on a woman?